It's now three days post-Ike, and we are celebrating the fact that we have electricity again. Once you are deprived of that most precious utility, power, you come to realize the impact its presence has in your life. No power means no air conditioning (our home was absolutely suffocating in the September heat & humidity of Texas' waning summer), no heated meals, no lights to navigate the dark recesses of your home, and no creature comforts that we take advantage of on a daily basis like INTERNET ACCESS and uploading and editing my photography images!!!! Oh, how I missed my PC... :O) Still, even as I write this, over 1.6 million homes in the Houston and Galveston areas are without power, which is about 75% of the power company's total customer base of 2.25 million homes! (We were lucky indeed...)
When you are faced with such a daunting natural phenomenon and powerful force of nature that Ike was, you are forced to make do with what you have and make the best of a really bad situation. For example, our chief concern during the power outage was keeping our baby Tori cool. Like I said, the house was uncomfortably warm, and if we were feeling bothered, then baby Tori was especially not enjoying the inhospitable climate. Luckily, we had one of those old DC-to-AC inverters that you can run electronics from using your car's plugin, and so we were able to run an extension cord from my hubby's vehicle, through the garage, and into the back door of our home where we plugged that cord into a box fan that we had pointed towards our little cherub. Talk about low-tech! :) Fortunately, this mousetrap we rigged up lasted long enough (thank you car battery!) to give our baby at least a few nights' rest until power was restored in the neighborhood.
Of course, while we rode out the storm, it was pretty scary at times, especially when the winds, reaching speeds over 100mph, rattled our windows and shook the house! But overall, the house held up and we didn't sustain any real damage except for some unlucky pine trees (your shade and pine cones will be sorely missed).
Sadly, our neighbors to the southeast in Galveston and surrounding communities didn't do as well. I have included a picture of a beachfront community, Crystal Beach I believe, that was hit hard by Ike. The home you see was the only one left standing after Ike's fury.
